


An Art Uncalled For

by splatterednoise



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Divination, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Not the other way around, Walburga Black's A+ Parenting, sometimes...divination finds you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28690947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splatterednoise/pseuds/splatterednoise
Summary: For the Black brothers, Divination is not just a subject at Hogwarts or something that you do—it's something that happens.
Relationships: Regulus Black & Sirius Black
Comments: 9
Kudos: 50





	An Art Uncalled For

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work, mostly because I've never managed to write anything short enough to actually finish it so...hope you like it!

Regulus woke as the smooth, gilded brass doorknob turned. A slow creak, creeping  further and further to the left until there was a soft  _ snick  _ and his door inched open. A shadowy figure stood in the frame, haloed by the soft, flickering glow of the hallway’s gas lamps.

“Reggie,” Sirius said softly, almost whimpering, as he stumbled into the room. His older brother turned his head away and Regulus could see the shiny tear tracks slipping down his cheeks, crawling over his nose and his jawline.

His breath hitched as he threw back the covers and practically launched himself out of bed, grabbing onto Sirius’s shoulders and steering him to sit at the end of the bed. Sirius dropped onto the duvet like a marionette with its strings cut. 

With a quick flick of his wand, he closed the door and lit the lamp on his bedside table. It threw Sirius into sharp relief; his skin was clammy and pale, and his whole body was trembling, wracked with tiny spasms. He had both hands wrapped around a thick, brown glass bottle with an unfamiliar label, and kept it pressed to his chest as the muscles in his fingers twitched uncontrollably.

“Sirius...” he breathed.

He didn’t really need to ask what had happened. He’d heard his mother shouting the curse through the floorboards, and then his brother’s screams had ricocheted through the entire house for a long, agonizing minute. 

It wasn’t like there was anything he could do to stop it, once she’d gotten started. He couldn’t beat his mother in a duel—he’d only end up writhing on the floor right alongside his brother. And there was no surer way to make a punishment last longer, for himself or for his brother, than to protest it.

But it still hurt so, so badly, to be forced to do nothing but listen.

“Reg,” Sirius whispered, and shoved his hands forward, clumsily pressing the bottle into Regulus’s chest. He grabbed it quickly.

“Is this one of those Muggle ones?” he asked, sniffing it. 

It smelled absolutely rank, which confirmed— “Yeah,” said Sirius. “So it shouldn’t…”

He looked up sharply. Sirius looked pained, and scared, and then he placed the tip of his wand underneath the bottle and cast _lumos_. 

Regulus looked into the Muggle beer bottle and gasped when he saw the unfiltered dregs at the bottom shaped, unmistakably, into the macabre form of a skull. The jaw sat unhinged, like a snake about to devour its prey, and the empty orbital sockets seemed to glint at him. Like they knew something he didn’t.

He looked up at Sirius. “That isn’t supposed to happen. Not with—I mean, it’s Muggle, it shouldn’t...there shouldn’t be any divinatory properties.”

Sirius nodded miserably and knotted his hands together in his lap. “I didn’t even swirl it or anything.”

Regulus quickly placed the bottle onto his nightstand and scrambled for his wardrobe, sticking his head in and feeling for the tea set he kept stashed in the very back corner. As soon as he felt the cool, porcelain handle of the pot, he pulled it out and handed it off to Sirius while he went fishing for two cups. 

He heard Sirius fumbling through the tea tucked in the small wooden case under his bed, and then preparing it in the pot, casting a quick  _ aguamenti  _ and a heating charm. By the time Regulus emerged from the wardrobe, two black porcelain tea cups with gold filigree patterns branching up the sides in hand, Sirius had the pot ready and resting on Regulus’s nightstand next to the beer bottle. His hands were still shaking, even clenched in his t-shirt—the jagged logo of some Muggle band that spent far too much time screaming, in Regulus’s opinion. 

He’d had enough screaming in fifteen years at Grimmauld Place to last a lifetime.

Placing the cups next to the matching pot, he quickly poured out two cups of tea and handed one off to Sirius before snatching up his own and downing a huge swallow, the scent of jasmine flooding his nostrils. He drained it down to the last sip and then he met Sirius’s eyes as they swirled their cups once, twice, three times—clockwise, counter-clockwise, clockwise. 

Then, together, they raised the cups to their lips and left only the dregs behind. 

The silence stretched.

“Fuck,” Sirius said, faux-profoundly, staring at the bottom of the cup. 

“You could say that again,” Regulus muttered. He showed Sirius the crucifix that had formed in his cup. It was difficult to distinguish from a regular cross, but he thought some of the vague blobs looked distinctly separate from the neat lines of the cross. “Looks like mother will be after me, next.”

“Her and that bloody curse, I swear. And look, I got that fucking skull again.” 

Sirius tipped his cup to show Regulus the skull that decorated the bottom—a dead ringer for the one in the beer bottle.

“ _ Fuck, _ ” Regulus repeated. “We—we have to go, Sirius. We can’t stay here anymore.  _ You  _ can’t.”

Sirius inhaled deeply, scrubbed at the drying tears on his face. “Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“Well,” said Regulus, looking back down into his cup again. He had no desire to stay and let his mother torture him some more, and Sirius...he’d be dead, if he stayed.

And he was definitely not about to let that happen.

“Might as well do it right, then, huh?” Regulus remarked, setting the cup aside and pulling his pajama shirt off. Laying back on his bed, he picked the cup back up and swirled it once, twice, three times and then smacked it down onto his chest, right over his heart. 

Grimacing at the feel of the soggy tea leaves dripping over his skin, he pulled back the cup and waited while Sirius examined it critically. He tilted his head, leaning in and squinting, before making a curious hum and pulling back again. He didn’t say anything, until Regulus felt the impatience bubbling up inside him reach its limit and burst out, “Well?”

“It’s...It’s a fucking broom, Reggie.”

“A  _ broom? _ ” he repeated. He craned his head down, but he still couldn’t see it very well.

“Here,” Sirius said, conjuring up a hand mirror and holding it out to him.

“It’s a broom,” said Regulus, disbelief strong in his voice as he stared at the mirror.

“If that isn’t the clearest answer we’ve ever gotten from the tea, Reg, I’ll eat my fucking hat.”

“You don’t even own a hat, idiot, you’re too in love with your hair.”

Sirius scoffed and stood up, pacing across the room with his trembling hands shoved into his armpits. When he turned to meet Regulus’s eyes, his gaze was piercing. “Fine, but we’re taking your broom—I don’t think my hands are up for the journey.”

His lips quirked in a sharp grin. “Last one packed is a loser.”


End file.
